{"id":2972,"date":"2025-08-08T00:27:56","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T00:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/?page_id=2972"},"modified":"2025-08-08T00:30:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T00:30:23","slug":"white-house-bestows-presidential-lifetime-achievement-award-honor-on-musician-composer-and-educator-bill-banfield","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/?page_id=2972","title":{"rendered":"White House bestows Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award honor on musician, composer, and educator Bill Banfield"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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A graduate of BU\u2019s School of Theology, Bill Banfield established the Africana Studies department at Berklee College of Music.<\/span><\/p>\n

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To receive the\u00a0President\u2019s Call to Service Award<\/a>, honorees are expected to have completed 4,000 hours of \u201cextraordinary\u201d public service in their chosen field. The man who will accept one of this year\u2019s prestigious honors from the Biden administration on Friday surely surpassed that benchmark years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A composer, educator, and author, Dr. Bill Banfield has served three times as a Pulitzer Prize judge for American music and is currently a research \u00a0associate at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. A 1988 graduate of Boston University\u2019s School of Theology, Banfield established the Africana Studies department in 2005 at Berklee College of Music, where he is now professor emeritus.<\/span><\/p>\n

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He is also the man behind the Jazz Urbane Cafe, the\u00a0arts venue scheduled to begin construction this fall in Roxbury\u2019s Nubian Square<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m still wrapping my head around what it all means,\u201d said Banfield about the honor, which he will receive at Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain. The ceremony will feature performances by the Boston Arts Academy Choir, the saxophonist Najee, and Banfield\u2019s own\u00a0Imagine Orchestra<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Also known as the President\u2019s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Call to Service Award was created in 2003 by the administration of George W. Bush, following previous iterations dating back to the 1980s. The program went on hiatus under Donald Trump and has been reinstated under the current administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A native of Detroit who attended that city\u2019s historic\u00a0Cass Technical High School<\/a>, Banfield began his career in education as a 19-year-old teacher in the Boston Public Schools. For more than 30 years, he has taught a class called the \u201cTheology of American Popular Music\u201d at colleges across the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

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While studying at New England Conservatory, he was offered an opportunity to teach at Madison Park High School. At the time, he was just two or three years older than his students.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cI immediately had to undertake a professional role,\u201d he recalled, joking that \u201cI couldn\u2019t bum around with the students.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cI began to see the impact of my work immediately, and it made an impact on me. I thought, \u2018Well, if I\u2019m going to do music and be in education, I have an opportunity to train young people.\u2019 \u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The 4,000-hours commitment for the Lifetime Achievement Award is \u201conly formulaic,\u201d he said. \u201cReally, it\u2019s about the narrative of one\u2019s work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Banfield has written several books on the Black American musical experience, ranging from conversations with Black composers and essays on contemporary music to a biography of Pat Patrick, the longtime Sun Ra associate who is the father of former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. Banfield describes the through-line of his scholarly work as \u201cgriotology.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Throughout his career, he has emphasized the connection between music and spirituality. Artists such as John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, and Woody Guthrie are effectively lay ministers, he maintains, expounding the gospel of community and, yes, service to others.<\/span><\/p>\n

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During the pandemic, Banfield said, honorees could not travel to the White House to receive their Lifetime Achievement Award, so the Biden administration began sending emissaries to each recipient\u2019s city of residence. That practice continues with Friday\u2019s celebration at AME Bethel.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful community event,\u201d said Banfield, \u201cwhich is what it should be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A graduate of BU\u2019s School of Theology, Bill Banfield established the Africana Studies department at Berklee College of Music. To receive the\u00a0President\u2019s Call to Service Award, honorees are expected to have completed 4,000 hours of \u201cextraordinary\u201d public service in their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2972","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/?author=1"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":null,"rttpg_excerpt":"A graduate of BU\u2019s School of Theology, Bill Banfield established the Africana Studies department at Berklee College of Music. To receive the\u00a0President\u2019s Call to Service Award, honorees are expected to have completed 4,000 hours of \u201cextraordinary\u201d public service in their...","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2972"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2976,"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2972\/revisions\/2976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}